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No, it's more like "why is ~50% of the country not pursuing IT?" Seeing as IT is fantastically important to today's economy, and half of the population just isn't interested in taking part in it, it seems like an issue that should be researched. This is one way to do that. You can act all put upon and oppressed, but as you're not, you just sound like one of the people who causes people to think IT is full of socially-awkward neckbeards who think they're special.

Seeing as IT is fantastically important to today's economy, and half of the population just isn't interested in taking part in it, it seems like an issue that should be researched. This is one way to do that.

They aren't "researching", they are recruiting and trying to change the statistics.

You can act all put upon and oppressed

I don't feel oppressed. I just think it's profoundly stupid to try to mess with people's free career choices.

They will become your next project manager. Then they can stop learning, because in management roles that is not required. (It would be useful though.)

At least around here, we have a reasonable amount of "women in IT." They're just not coding. There are a lot of women in management, testing, QA, UX - anything that does not mean actually writing software. Some of them have a university degree that prepared them for writing software, but most escape that role very quickly after graduation. I'm pretty sure the

You sound so put upon. I don't see many male politicians talk about vasectomies or the fact that women have held any rights in America for less than 100 years.

"Catharine Esther Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher, the preacher and revivalist, feared that woman suffrage heralded an imminent national crisis challenging the “most sacred interests of woman and of the family state.”She pointed out that under New York State law women had more advantages than men had.

A woman had unlimited and independent control of her property but regardless of how rich a wife was, the husband had to support her and the children. It had also become easier for a woman than for a man to obtain a divorce."

"Almost immediately after the April committee meetings, Helena Gilder detailed the reasons she opposed woman suffrage in a long letter to her dearest friend , Mary Hallock Foote...

She , like many other anti-suffragists, believed in an inextricable link between military service and voting; only a person able to sacrifice himself on the battlefield earned the right to vote."

"In view of the privileges they already had women did not need political rights. Mariana Van Rensselaer articulated her particular views about women in articles for the New York World in May and June 1894;...She considered the enfranchisement of millions of women a risk not worth taking. Women already held more privileges than men under the law.

Specifically, Van Rensselaer wrote, a woman had control of her earnings, her personal property, and any real estate she owned. She could carry on a business or profession, she had no responsibility for her husband’s debts, and she was not required to support him.

She could sue and be sued, and she could make contracts. She had no obligation to serve on juries. With her husband she had equal rights to their children and, yet, he was obligated to support her and her children. Women were entitled to alimony in the event of a divorce, while a man could not ask for alimony.

She was entitled to one third of her husband’s real estate upon his death, but he was not entitled to her property after death if there were no children. Van Rensselaer concluded that the distribution of labor and privileges between women and men seemed fair, that the different roles of women and men were critically important, and that it was “slander” to claim that men did not already take good care of women."

But when someone invests in a minority cause

Except women are literally in the majority in the US. Men are the minority.

They don't talk about tubectomies either and there are plenty of female pro-lifers (I guess you want to take away their vote because they're electing people you don't like to represent them?). I'm not sure why any politician would be talking about something that happened to women 100 years ago nor why you are bringing it up. I am assuming that you mean about the time men got conscripted to go die and shortly thereafter women were given the vote.

I'll stop playing my tiny violin when literally 99% of rapists are no longer men.

If you're using rape stats to justify discriminatory programs against men, then do you also support discriminatory programs against blacks, since blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit rape?

Right, because that stupid hypothetical "evil affirmative action" scenario has ever happened to any of us.

I get and even endorse the principal you're espousing. Equality is a high value, and doing it wrong can hurt it's own objective. But ridiculous hyperbole just makes you come across as completely disinterested in the actual idea, and only concerned with a the argument as a matter of convenience to your own interests.

That's what women would have you believe, but they are experts in manipulating men to feel we're in charge. It's not the case, women have been running the show for the entire time. They are just smart enough to understand the value of subtle action, and humble enough to not demand credit.

This documentary did a great job looking into what drives our choice of careers and found women are just not that interested in STEM jobs, generally speaking.

tl;dw - The more free and open a society becomes, the more likely people are to follow their predispositions. For women that means comfortable jobs with lots of socializing opportunities. For men that was more hands-on type of work relating to personal interests.

ability to [Y] != desire to [Y]. Assuming that every [group X] should have equal representation in [profession Y] is to assume that every [group X] has roughly the same number of members who want to do [profession Y]. Also, examples of countries where [group X] has equal representation in [profession Y] do not prove this assumption, either. For all we know, it may be that [profession Y] is merely seen as lucrative, and therefore members of [group X] are willing to do [profession Y] to make ends meet. They o

Your major flaw is the presupposition that sexism is the reason there are relatively few women in technology. You are excusing dictionary sexism based on assertions of past sexism with no proof of its existence.

Secondly, no it isn't fair to hand people a proportional part of any pie. Not when they have the same opportunities to earn it like everyone else.

So now Google thinks they need to pay women to learn to code? What an absolutely sexist campaign. Women are plenty capable of learning to code, they don't need cash payouts by patriarchal companies; this is akin to prostitution and Google should be ashamed.

There's been an ever-increasing push over the last 10 or 12 years to get more girls and women into tech, with almost no visible results; in fact, the number of women in tech has been declining for decades. This seems odd at first, but the reason this push is constantly being attempted at all is that it's part of a larger effort to increase the pool of applicants and decrease salaries. It's the same reason that Facebook, Google, et al. want to increase the number of H1-B visa workers.

There is nothing stopping a girl or woman from learning programming/networking/etc. if she wants to, and these increasingly bizarre, desperate, and creepy attempts to lure in women will end up pushing away the ones who might have pursued tech careers otherwise.

My salary has been steadily increasing and I certainly haven't found that there are skilled developers sitting idle at home. I can collect a small fortune in placement fees, if only I know some out-of-work developers I wouldn't be ashamed to recommend.

The simple fact from where I am standing is: There is a lot of work and there are not enough skilled people to do it yet we are only using 50% of the population.

But the sector has a massive negative image. Not even so much anti-women as anti-human. If you don'

There is a lot of work and there are not enough skilled people to do it yet we are only using 50% of the population.

I think you're oversimplifying. There seem to be supply and demand dynamics in play.

We have a tug of war. Google and Facebook want to increase the supply of developers, so the prevailing wage goes down. Current and aspiring developers want a decrease in the supply, so that their wages go up.

I don't blame misogyny for girls not getting into programming, because I don't think computer programming is necessarily characterized by social interaction. The lone "cowboy[/cowgirl] coder" is much more of the norm than our zealous gender imbalance adjusters think.

When I was getting into programming in the 90's I certainly didn't rely on anybody else's affirmation -- I learned how to program sitting by myself at my computer(s) with very little in the way of two way communication with the outside world. I realize it's not the 90's anymore, but the argument that says you have to have a vibrant Twitter presence and go to local programmer meetups to be a coder today is, quite frankly, hogwash. It's about the code, friend.

Here's another theory that I will probably be flamed for -- maybe girls don't get into programming as often for the same reason that female deer don't bash heads against each other as often as the males do. Maybe it boils down to testosterone. Males of many species have an impulsive drive to accomplish certain things, and in humans' case this is largely independent of intellectual aptitude. Yes, girls are smart. Many could be good programmers. But do they want to? Are they driven to? Am I (at least partially) driven to my peculiar lifestyle of being glued to a screen and eschewing much social interaction because of testosterone? ("Yeah, you'd like to _think_ so" I can hear my naysayer naysaying.) But these are questions I honestly ask.

I don't blame misogyny for girls not getting into programming, because I don't think computer programming is necessarily characterized by social interaction.

I do. Look at the first post on this article for an example. For that matter, look at the first response to that post as well. Immediately, Slashdot readers (who we *used to* expect more from) objectified all of these women. Twice. Before anyone else could make a remotely educated comment.

I agree that misogyny exists, as our fine Slashdot trolls demonstrated above; but I disagree that it is the cause of girls not getting into programming, for the reasons I described in my post. You are certainly entitled to your own opinion.

I am not sure that calling someone an object is all that flattering.Sexual partners.

My goal was to speak the truth, not to flatter.

I think most adults want to be treated modally, so to speak. When we're on the way to the bedroom, we want to be sexually desired. When we're on a conference call, we want to be seen as smart and competent and put-together. When we're on the sports field, we want to be seen as tough.

That's why I don't have a problem with someone being seen primarily as an object of sexual desire in the right circumstances. The problem is when a person only sees others as sexual objects.

I am for it, as long as it isn't also construed to discourage the boys. That's the last thing we need to do to our "educational" indoctrination system.

In fact, anything that undoes the dumbing down to match the lowest achievers that has been done in the last 80 years or more needs to be undone itself.Reading comprehension for instance, went down when they dropped phonics back in the 40's. That was a monumental mistake IMO. So now, in 2014, we have 3+ generations of people who cannot read the daily fish wr

Focusing on the line that says "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." Why should that matter? If they take a CS course from somewhere else does that mean they don't qualify? Seems more like drummed up business then actually caring about driving interest in CS.

The only reason Google is doing this is they're about to get hammered for having a nearly all-male workforce. Truly, Google could care less whether this program actually accomplishes anything or whether more women get into coding. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, they can always say they've poured a few million dollars into the effort and they tried.

Frankly, I could care less whether the program works or not, or even the fact that it is aimed squarely at women. This is because a lot of code

Total Cost: $12,500 for 12 weeks.We offer a $2,000 scholarship for women, underrepresented minority groups, and veterans or members of the U.S. military. We also provide a $2,000 refund when you accept a position through our placement program.

As someone who tutors in CS while finishing up his bachelors, I think this is great. Too many times I see women who have the skills to be a good programmer but don't have someone pushing them hard to be a great programmer because it's assumed that the field just "isn't for Women." Women can be just as good at engineering, programming, math and science as men and I think the industry as a whole can stand to get a bit more even in terms of gender representation. If anything, encouring the women in our country to get into these more technical fields could help drive the men who are competing with them to work harder and perhaps we'll be importing less tech savvy people from other countries. My $0.02.

As a woman and ex-coder, I'd say I got out of software development because of immoral companies like Google with their boot-licking race to the bottom when it comes to respect for the individual. My aversion to the field is an aversion to macho culture only to the extent that "might makes right" (i.e. "we do it because we can") is macho culture. I don't think they're appropriate in the workplace, but I'm not put off by sexist jokes, assumptions that I will fail (if anything, I've been treated too "delicately") and what-have-you.

I believe it goes beyond appearances. During the sexual revolution the en masse influx of women to the workforce put a depression upon wages (primarily entry level positions) as employers now had significantly more applicants. Women born after 1978 now are the majority of students of college campuses, attain higher levels of education than their male counterparts, and are likely to earn more over the course of their lifetime than men born during the same time. Unfortunately for companies like Google, the

It's never too early to start complaining. The criticism of "separate but equal" in education was that the "equal" part is a myth. Now we are experimenting with "separate and explicitly unequal" in education. Awesome.

And I think you're wrong about what a successful outcome of this experiment suggests. If you provide a different environment for women to study CS, and then they like it, they may just like the new environment, not the CS part. A credit is a credit. If you have to fulfill some science/math requ

I know a couple trans women from Canada who use the phrase "tall woman with a laptop" as code for other trans women. Because apparently if you see a tall woman using a laptop in a public place, odds are abnormally high that she's trans.;)

The right environment would imply replacing parents, so this feels very half-hearted (and unfairly discriminatory against boys who can't be blamed for many girls having idiotic parents, but will be affected by it anyway).

I'm just one guy, but I'm definitely going to try to teach my girls to code when they're old enough. I won't force them if they're not interested, but I'm going to work pretty damn hard to show them how fun it can be before I give up.

My daughter was coding when she was 8 (IBM Logo:) ). She's gone through programming to being a DBA and has recently entered Computer Security.

I will say that initially, she was a bog-standard office worker. But since she grew up around me (coding, etc), she was always asked about computer problems. She had no _desire_ to be in computers (initially anyway) but eventually bowed to the fact that she's a damned sight smarter than her co-workers with regards to computers.

Who knows if there's something genetic but there's obviously something cultural. Most women don't strive to immerse themselves in a culture that is predominated by socially awkward beta males. I don't understand why nobody accepts this obvious explanation for the lack of women.

It's obvious even in that little social microcosm of society we call high school. The beta males cliques gather in the library or the computer lab or wherever to do their nerdy things...maybe play Magic, or D&D, or whatever. At best there's what? Maybe there's one or two equally beta females hanging out with that group (if any). And it's certainly not because they're conspiring to exclude girls. In fact, they'd be happy if there were more among them. I know this because I was one of those kids and

Who knows if there's something genetic but there's obviously something cultural. Most women don't strive to immerse themselves in a culture that is predominated by socially awkward beta males. I don't understand why nobody accepts this obvious explanation for the lack of women.

It is filled with socially awkward beta males because they are working on their computers Saturday nights while the teen girls are banging the alpha males. I can tell you that if more girls would have wanted to have sex with me in high school, my technical skills would have been far lower.

So, the non-mysoginist explanation of what is deterring women from the field is that women are not being deterred. They are just not being attracted to the field because they are at a disadvantage due to the fact that they spent their youth treating men as sex objects instead of studying technology.

Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before, instead of trying to "lean in" on what feminists perceive as "soft skill white collar" industries.

Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before, instead of trying to "lean in" on what feminists perceive as "soft skill white collar" industries.

Sounds good?

I work at one of the largest Universities in the US.On our campus, females outnumber males by 3:2. This divide is growing. This is championed as a great thing for equality, diversity, etc.Of course, if it were reversed, it would be a shameful failure that needed $$$$$$$$$$$ and political outrage to be fixed.

Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before

WHAT are you talking about? Actual numbers of college graduates AND the percentage of college graduates among adults are at all-time highs in the United States, even among males. (See this chart [nytimes.com], attached to this article [nytimes.com], for example.)

What has changed is that the growth of female college graduates has increased much more rapidly than males, so women are now graduating in greater numbers and compose higher percentages of university students.

Focusing on the escapes isn't focusing on the problem. Tell me, which sex is more likely to be diagnosed for medical "treatment" than the other? The current schooling environment is hostile to boys. *That* is the reason they aren't good at it, they are not taught how because the teachers are predominantly female and don't know or want to know how to teach boys. So the boys escape.

... wait to see if this increases the number of women taking these courses and going into CS. If it does then that suggests that women are interested and just needed the right environment or some encouragement. If it doesn't we can conclude that they just are not interested because of genetics or whatever.

Sorry, but women aren't interested or not interested in CS, or any other topic. A woman might be interested, and another woman might not be interested. But implying that women as a class are or aren't interested is sexist in the extreme.

No matter what we do, many women will never be interested in such geeky stuff, just as many men aren't. To be successful, we should introduce any subject to young people in general, and encourage those who find it interesting, regardless of their sexual organs (which r

Another part of the "whatever" could be students visiting workplaces and finding out they've all switched to open-plan work environments with extremely high noise levels, constant interruptions, and zero privacy, and students are switching to other majors where they can have a career path that doesn't cap out by the time they're 35 and in which they have a work environment conducive to concentration.

At one month shy of 45 years old, I'm drowning in recruiters wanting me to talk to people, testing on my part has shown that employers are hella eager to speak with me, and they all see "20 years of experience" right at the top of my frickin' resume.

Seriously though - where in the hell does everyone get the idea that just because your beard turns gray you're suddenly worthless in IT? Sure I've seen IT folks who are, in all honesty, well past their expiration date - but this is mostly because they've either mentally checked-out, burned-out, or they're deluded prima donnas with demands that no other employer with a brain would want to even contemplate. The prima donnas are usually considered to be rock stars within the little company where they've worked for 15 years or so, but discover to their horror that the sweet little deals they have with their employer is something no other employer would want to buy into. The first two are fucking helpless whenever something new or unusual comes along. None of these, single or combined, make up the majority, and judging by my own experience, most employers know it.

Assertions aside, there's also the hordes of graybeards out there who not only read and write COBOL, FORTRAN, et al, but along the way write their own effing paychecks. Why? Because they know the ancient languages which the trend-chasing.NET and Ruby-on-Rails s'kiddies apparently can't be bothered to learn.;)

Indeed, I'm 35 and my career is really taking off. 30 seems to be the age where things really start to move these days, the point at which you have enough experience to start getting the into the more senior positions.

Maybe the "whatever" is that we are importing a steady stream of H-1B workers to reduce salaries, and that you're about as likely to find a job in IT after 45 as you are to find one in the NBA.

Maybe the "right environment" is where we only allow H-1B visas when unemployment is below 4%, and make it a felony to fake job postings to give jobs to foreigners instead of Americans.

45-year old guy here says you are full of it. Unless we are confining the job search a very narrow area with a history of ageism (Silicon Valley), I call bs on that kind of statements (statements I've been seeing for the last 20 years). Some of my colleagues/ex-colleagues are approaching their late 50's and are still getting well-paid, 6-figure gigs (both perm and contract).

If you are worth your shit, you will get a job in IT regardless of your age.

Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist. I grant that there is cooperation in a society, it is an inherent and necessary component. But to claim that is a "contract", requires that the thing be voluntary and agreed to. That generally is not the case.

I find that most of the people who use the term, "social contract" want me to do things for them, but can't be bothered to come up with reasons aside fr

Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist.

It's a metaphor. Read [wikipedia.org] and learn. Yes, the social contract is an "imaginary" contract. It's based on the idea that for society to exist, we all have to agree to some principles. There's lots of disagreement about what those principles are (i.e., what the "contract" consists of), but there has to be some sort of implicit agreement. Otherwise, it's in my best interest to go murder you and steal your food and clothes and money when no one's looking, because it will benefit me.

>Much better than today where the fight is typically for special rights and inequality.

No it's not. That's just something the ignorant conservatives claim as they see their white christianist privilege fading. Have you immersed yourself in the wingnut hate-radio/loon-blog/Fox News subculture?